Hubbert would gain nothing in Oden’s position as PSC Prez or as Treasurer. (Boy, its hard to keep from guffawing while I type those preposterous scenarios.)

Unless you know of some perfect men (or women) somewhere - apart from Jesus Christ - you have proven my point. The Church and the State exercise two very different kinds of authority; attempts to intermingle the two have been disastrous for both institutions because… a corrupt figure on one side almost always attempts to exercise undue influence on the other. Whether its Franco or Hitler co-opting their state churches to achieve their own abominable ends or Osama Bin Laden and Ayatollahs trying to keep everyone under sharia, it’s the same principle.

You may be surprised to know I am in favor of outlawing partial birth abortion. Which puts me to the right of many in your party on that issue, such as Rudy “Public Financing for Abortions” Giulliani and Mitt “I was Pro-Choice (and anti-Reagan) before I started running for President” Romney. My party tolerates a wide variety of opinions on this issue. Clearly, so does yours.

Thousands of different Judeo-Christian traditions, and you claim that you and your fellow conservatives have been able to whittle that down to “an (as in one single) enduring moral code.” For many of those Christian traditions, part of their moral code is that Jews are condemned to hell. How do you square such contradictions in a single moral code?

Of course, Scorpius, “we the people” are the government. That was the answer you wanted, right? Of course that just makes it all the more frightening when I hear conservatives clamoring for “less government” and when they declare that “government is the problem.”

Your comments about me personally are a) false. I’m stronger in my faith than I’ve ever been. b) cowardly. It’s easy to hide behind the computer and make ignorant claims about people you don’t know. This website is actually about legitimate political dialogue. You want to act like a third-grader toy was taken away.

Finally, your party, which just in the past year has featured a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage frontrunner for the presidential nomination (Rudy and Mitt, at different times), a pedophile, corruption galore, and of course a fundraiser for Islamist terrorists (these are just national stories I’m sure there’s more) has no claim to being the party of moral authority. My party never made that claim.

The End.

Going back to your comment #7 (the conversation has ranged far afield since then)… I really dislike policing comments, and I am loathe to do it. But in case you are curious, on that rare occasion that a comment gets deleted, here’s how it happens.

1. I read something that hits me in the gut as over the top, a step too far. (Occasionally someone will contact me about a comment that they believe crosses a line.)

2. I check with some folks who are in an informal close circle who offer thoughts on the blog and ask if they think it’s over the top. Sometimes they don’t and say things like, “Well, it may be offensive to a point, but I know you hate to get on that slippery slope, so I’d let it stay.” Other times they agree that it crosses a line and tell me they’d delete it if it were their blog. I put a lot of weight on what they say.

3. I err on the side of leniency because I so dislike getting into this.

4. While I do not care for any ad hominem attacks, I particularly dislike them when they are directed at some public figure who has been generous to offer time, opinions, insights, or other help to this blog. I don’t want insult-filled comments so ugly, irrelevant, and insubstantial that public figures are reluctant to be as generous as they have been.

And there you have it… it starts with my gut.

In my third year, and I think fewer than 10 comments have been deleted.

:)

I agree 100%.

Liberals, when are you going to stop reading “The World According to the ACLU” and actually read the Founding documents and contemporary literature for YOURSELVES???

Your abounding ignorance ought to embarrass you if you, indeed, care at all about intellectual honesty. (Which I know many of you don’t.)

-Institutions don’t inevitably corrupt one another. Imperfect men with ill-motives corrupt.

-Please go back and re-read history. The country was NOT founded on a strong belief in separation of church and state. This is Liberal-Leftist revisionism. The Founders were of varied stripes regarding faith denominations, but they, the laws they produced and the institutions that they constructed and were prevalent at the times were deeply rooted in morality and the proper place of religion. There is so much scholarship and and documentation of this that your denials subsist upon lunacy or lies.

-The Bible and the Constitution need not be mutually exclusive as you suggest. Yes, it is possible to be morally/philosophically opposed to a particular action and then behave indifferently politically/legally as to the action’s public effects, but, this is the namby-pambyism of Liberalism that disgusts and offends Conservatives. Thus, the crux of ideological standoffs.

Personally, although I’m not doubting your salvation for a nano-second, I do question your maturity and commitment in your Walk.

Christians are to be the salt. If you have no qualms regarding glaring inconsistencies and obvious disconnects between knowing what is morally right and either failing to condemn what is wrong or shrugging your shoulders and looking the other way, then you are either a coward or a willing accomplice for continued immorality. Burke admonished folks like you.

-So-called “Partial-birth” abortion is infanticide and is embraced and advocated by the Democrat Party and its Left-leaning subsidiaries (see: Clinton and the Congressional Dems in the 1990’s, the Dem Party Platform and N.O.W.).

-And finally, I didn’t say there was a “single Judeo-Christian tradition.” I said that we Conservatives believe in an enduring moral code (What is right and what is wrong, regardless of the Ages and individuals) that is based on tenets (ends in an “s” there) which are derived from Judeo-Christian traditions and Scripture.

You contend that moral issues are much too important to be determined by government, and so my question to you is this, “What comprises government, more specifically our government?”

When you can answer that question, you’ll be well on you way to discovering the theory on social compacts and all its proper functions and ramifications.